


All I Do, the Whole Day Through, is Dream of You

by Liv_Hates_Olives



Series: Help Me Hold On To You [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Gendry's in Storm's End, Just trying to make sense of canon, Post-Canon, arya sails west
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liv_Hates_Olives/pseuds/Liv_Hates_Olives
Summary: In her dreams, she kills her every night.She’s there, at the top of the Red Keep, and it’s just her and Cersei, the wasteland, the fire, the ashes, all forgotten. Every step she takes is heavy as lead, but she strides forward all the same, as if willed by the gods.Sometimes, she beheads her, clean across the neck, like Ilyn Payne had done to her father; sometimes, she gets her in the throat, watches with satisfaction as she dies. But sometimes, she sees the eyes widen with undisguised fear, the green eyes shining with tears and panicked pleads falling out of her mouth like water flowing through a river, and she feels a little sorry. She’ll hear the echo of a gruff voice, “You remember where the heart is?”, and she’ll give her the gift of mercy. Swift as a deer, quick as a snake.Fear cuts deeper than swords.-Arya's always had dreams. Of becoming an outlaw in the Riverlands, of being a wolf. Now, her dreams involve a certain bullheaded blacksmith too.Gendry dreams too, in his own way. He stays up at night, lost in a reverie of old memories. Memories made with a grey-eyed, stubborn Stark girl, in particular.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Series: Help Me Hold On To You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644085
Comments: 22
Kudos: 59





	All I Do, the Whole Day Through, is Dream of You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I've returned! Here's another little oneshot, while I work on other mysterious stuff! This one is for yanak234, I suppose, it's her fault this thing exists from her buttering me up about my canon writing. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> The title is from "Dream of You" by Camila Cabello! (It's a very good song, at least based on my tastes and opinions!)

In her dreams, she kills her every night.

She’s there, at the top of the Red Keep, and it’s just her and Cersei, the wasteland, the fire, the ashes, all forgotten. Every step she takes is heavy as lead, but she strides forward all the same, as if willed by the gods. 

Sometimes, she beheads her, clean across the neck, like Ilyn Payne had done to her father; sometimes, she gets her in the throat, watches with satisfaction as she dies. But sometimes, she sees the eyes widen with undisguised fear, the green eyes shining with tears and panicked pleads falling out of her mouth like water flowing through a river, and she feels a little sorry. She’ll hear the echo of a gruff voice, “You remember where the heart is?”, and she’ll give her the gift of mercy. Swift as a deer, quick as a snake.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

And then she’s back in the streets somehow, and there’s too much ruckus to wonder how, and the man who comes up to her and shakes her by the shoulders isn’t a stranger, it’s Gendry. He’ll pull her until they’re face to face and yell in a panicked voice, “Do you know where my wife is?” and her heart stops a little she opens her mouth to answer, she’s right here, stupid. Then, though, she realizes she’s not his wife and he can’t hear her anyways, but he’s already left. She stretches her hand out, to stop him, but by then it’s too late, and he’s out of reach.

He’s gone.

That’s usually when she wakes up. She shoots up from her bed, panting and heaving, heart frantically pounding in her chest, as she pats her bed and slowly starts to come back to herself. Then, she lets herself cry. 

It doesn’t do much to help, it doesn’t stop the images in her head from haunting her, but she lets herself cry because she never could before, because at least it means she’s feeling something. She lets herself cry for her father, her mother, for Robb, for Rickon, for Theon. It’s cathartic, almost, and it gives her more relief than killing Cersei could ever bring, if she could be honest with herself. 

If her crew hears her, they never comment on it. 

Every once in a while, after she kills her, she finds herself in a forest instead of the streets of Flea Bottom, a wolf instead of a woman. Sometimes they’re in the Riverlands, sometimes they’re further up north, always moving. On those nights, she’s the leader of the hunt, and wherever she goes, they go. On those nights, when she howls at the moon, a dozen other cries respond to her call; a pack. When she wakes up from those, she’s always a little disappointed.

The best dreams, though, are the ones she has during the day. She’ll be there, charting their maps and commanding the crew, and she’ll dream of finding new lands and treasures, yes, but more importantly, she dreams of going back home, to her family. She dreams of seeing Sansa again and gorging on lemon cakes with her, of seeing Bran and the restoration of King’s Landing, of being with Jon again beyond the Wall, but she especially dreams of Gendry. 

Gendry, with his earnest blue eyes, with the way he laughed, the way he smiled, the way he said her name. It still makes her shiver when she thinks about it, even in the heat of the summer air out on the sea.

She wonders about what he’s doing in those moments, if he’s speaking with his people, if he’s in the forge, if he’s busy learning how to read and write and use a fork. She wonders if he’s thinking about her too. 

Sometimes she thinks they could still run away together, be outlaws and bring justice for the smallfolk, just exist as Gendry and Arya, together. Sometimes she dreams of being with him at Storm’s End, not as his lady wife, but simply as his, and him as hers, building their family again with the people they love. Sometimes she dreams that he came with her, that he’s next to her and they’re looking out at the same sea, the same ocean that reminds her of his eyes. She wonders if he’s still waiting for her, even after she told him not to, because he was always stubborn, why should that change now?

She wonders if he’s angry with her for leaving him, and everyone else, again, if he misses her, if he still loves her. She suspects it’s probably a combination of all three, but that doesn’t stop her from dreaming, from hoping for… _something_ with him.

For the past ten years, she’s lived a nightmare; why shouldn’t her daydreams be allowed to be real too?

—

He doesn’t sleep much these days. He never did. 

He blames it on the featherbed, most of the time, too soft and plush for someone so used to sleeping on the ground. He doesn’t know how to make himself comfortable, doesn’t know how in seven hells people could sleep feeling like they’re in freefall. 

Besides, he didn’t need a featherbed to sleep; the best rest he’d ever had was on a pile of grain sacks with a cloak for a blanket anyways.

But really, most nights he can’t sleep because he’s too busy remembering. _What_ , exactly, he’s remembering, varies from night to night; sometimes, he’s thinking back to Melisandre and the leeches that stole his blood, “the blood of kings”, as she’d called it. Sometimes, he thinks back to the chill that reached his bones beyond the Wall, of the panic that washed over him at his first sighting of the White Walkers. 

Sometimes, he’s reliving a raucous feast and the drunk, overeager proposal that followed it. 

He spends his days in the forge or with Davos, trying to learn how to do lordly things, to read, to ride a horse properly, to use a fork. Davos is the one who does the actual lording, the attending to the issues of the people, and Gendry does his best to observe and learn. He’s told by Davos he’s getting better at it, and Gendry knows he means it, but he still feels like he wasn’t built for all of this sometimes. 

And in those moments, where he feels like he’s going to fall off his horse right on his face or when he wants to use his fork to stab someone instead of a steak, and Davos fondly remarks, “Seven hells, what kind of a lord are you, lad?” he’s taken back to an indignant voice retorting, “the bad kind,” taken back to crabapples and brotherhoods and family. 

He misses her. He’d be a liar if he said he didn’t. 

He misses her eyes and the way she quirked her eyebrows at him, subtle and daring and teasing and perfect. He misses the smell of her hair, he misses the way she kissed him. 

He misses everything. 

If he’s being honest, _most_ of his nights are spent reliving that fateful feast, revising the words of his speech and adjusting them each time. He’s never been very well spoken, but he’s gone over those words so many times he’s certain he could recite them in his sleep at this point. In the daydreams that haunt him at night, he gets it right, she says yes, says it a million different ways each time, but it’s a yes. 

But when the sun rises up and his bed is still empty apart from him, it’s impossible to forget what her real answer was. 

He’s not sure what to do with it now, all of the love and feeling he’d had for her. 

At first he’d thought he could drown it in anger, when she first left, back to King’s Landing, where it all started, while he moved into a castle. When he arrived at Storm’s End, in a new place once more with no familiar faces to make him feel at home this time, he didn’t know what to feel but anger and hate. 

Anger and hate at Daenerys for making him a lord and for burning King’s Landing, at Arya for leaving him, at everyone who kept comparing him to his father. 

It’d been years since he first found out who his father, and yet he still hated the very thought of it, hated the idea that he was related to the drunken fool people had called King of the Seven Kingdoms. 

He hated the stories they told of him, hated the way they all treated him like a hero instead of an idiot, hated that they were all right, that he did look like him, hated until he was too tired to hate anymore. 

So now, instead, he listens, and he remembers. 

During the day, he listens to Davos make conversation with the smallfolk and tell the story of his son, and in the night, he remembers the way his mother, with yellow hair and a sweet voice, sang to him as a child. 

During the day, he does his best to listen to the concerns of the smallfolk and find a solution with Davos’ help, and in the night, he remembers a fateful night in a cave, long ago, remembers offers of family that he should’ve taken. 

During the day, he listens to the news of King Bran and Queen Sansa, of the rebuilding of King’s Landing, and in the night, he remembers the last conversation he last had with her, remembers that she’ll come back. Back to Westeros, back to her family. 

Back to him, he hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> So, what'd you think? Comments, feedback, and kudos are all greatly appreciated!
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you want to chat with me on tumblr, my username is livehatesolives!


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